The big questions are Why? And What to do about it? How to raise wages? Drive down wages - especially public workers is the balanced-budget mantra of Governors. Government employment loss has equaled private sector growth in the past two years. Higher wages and general inflation would boost exports and effectively cut household debt burden. But the Republican economists are the anti-inflation police and they have got a majority in the House and a veto-block in the Senate. Makes you yearn for a one party state - but which party?
Last Ten Years Of Wage Gains Lower Than During The Great Depression | ThinkProgress:
"For decades, wages and incomes for the American worker have been stagnant, even as productivity has increased substantially. Over the 2000 to 2009 period, workers experienced a “lost decade,” with incomes falling by nearly five percent and wages hardly growing at all. And according to Jed Graham, the last decade in terms of real wages was actually worse than the Great Depression:
The increase in total private-sector wages, adjusted for inflation, from the start of 2001 has fallen far short of any 10-year period since World War II, according to Commerce Department data. In fact, if the data are to be believed, economy wide wage gains have even lagged those in the decade of the Great Depression (adjusted for deflation). Over the past decade, real private-sector wage growth has scraped bottom at 4%, just below the 5% increase from 1929 to 1939, government data show."
